Most Common Leadership Skills

Most common Leadership Types are:
– Autocratic leadership.
– Bureaucratic leadership.
– Charismatic leadership.
– Democratic leadership or participative leadership.
– Laissez-faire leadership.
– People-oriented leadership or relations-oriented leadership.
– Servant leadership.
– Task-oriented leadership.
– Transactional leadership.
– Transformational leadership.

Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where a leader exerts high levels of power over his or her employees or team members. People within the team are given few opportunities for making suggestions, even if these would be in the team’s or organization’s interest.

Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Because of this, autocratic leadership usually leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. Also, the team’s output does not benefit from the creativity and experience of all team members, so many of the benefits of teamwork are lost.

For some routine and unskilled jobs, however, this style can remain effective where the advantages of control outweigh the disadvantages.
Bureaucratic Leadership
Bureaucratic leaders “work by the book”, ensuring that their staff follow procedures exactly. This is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as working with machinery, with toxic substances or at heights) or where large sums of money are involved (such as cash-handling).

In other situations, the inflexibility and high levels of control exerted can demoralize staff, and can diminish the organizations ability to react to changing external circumstances.

Charismatic Leadership
A charismatic leadership style can appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that the leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is very energetic in driving others forward.

However, a charismatic leader can tend to believe more in him or herself than in their team. This can create a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader were to leave: In the eyes of their followers, success is tied up with the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and needs long-term commitment from the leader.

Democratic Leadership or Participative Leadership
Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also helps to develop people’s skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their own destiny, and so are motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward.

As participation takes time, this style can lead to things happening more slowly than an autocratic approach, but often the end result is better. It can be most suitable where team working is essential, and quality is more important than speed to market or productivity.

Laissez-Faire Leadership
This French phrase means “let them do” and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her colleagues to get on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is being achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership works for teams in which the individuals are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers are not exerting sufficient control.

People-Oriented Leadership or Relations-Oriented Leadership
This style of leadership is the opposite of task-oriented leadership: the leader is totally focused on organizing, supporting and developing the people in the leader’s team. A participative style, it tends to lead to good teamwork and creative collaboration. However, taken to extremes, it can lead to failure to achieve the team’s goals. In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership.

Servant Leadership
This term, coined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally recognized as such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by virtue of meeting the needs of his or her team, he or she is described as a “servant leader”. In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be involved in decision-making.

Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where values are increasingly important, in which servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people practicing servant leadership will often find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.

Task-Oriented Leadership
A highly task-oriented leader focuses only on getting the job done, and can be quite autocratic. He or she will actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan, organize and monitor. However, as task-oriented leaders spare little thought for the well-being of their teams, this approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties in motivating and retaining staff. Task-oriented leaders can benefit from an understanding of the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid, which can help them identify specific areas for development that will help them involve people more.

Transactional Leadership
This style of leadership starts with the premise that team members agree to obey their leader totally when they take a job on: the transaction is (usually) that the organization pays the team members, in return for their effort and compliance. As such, the leader has the right to punish team members if their work doesn’t meet the pre-determined standard.

Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader could give team members some control of their income/reward by using incentives that encourage even higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively a transactional leader could practice “management by exception”, whereby, rather than rewarding better work, he or she would take corrective action if the required standards were not met.

Transactional leadership is really just a way of managing rather a true leadership style, as the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work, but remains a common style in many organizations.

Transformational Leadership
A person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are highly visible, and spend a lot of time communicating. They don’t necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility amongst their teams. While their enthusiasm is often infectious, they can need to be supported by “detail people”.

In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.

The transformational leadership style is the dominant leadership style taught in the “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You” leadership program, although we do recommend that other styles are brought as the situation demands.

Using the Right Style: Situational Leadership
While the Transformation Leadership approach is often highly effective, there is no one right way to lead or manage that suits all situations. To choose the most effective approach for you, you must consider:

– The skill levels and experience of the members of your team. – The work involved (routine or new and creative).
– The organizational environment (stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous). – You own preferred or natural style.

A good leader will find him or herself switching instinctively between styles according to the people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred to as “situational leadership”
For example, the manager of a small factory trains new machine operatives using a bureaucratic style to ensure operatives know the procedures that achieve the right standards of product quality and workplace safety. The same manager may adopt a more participative style of leadership when working on production line improvement with his or her team of supervisors.

Anil Ambani believes firmly in hard work. The passion you should have for your work is the foremost in having a leadership role in any activity.
Everyone in the company looks up to their boss for inspiration, especially since the boss. As a boss, a sense of purpose should always be in your mind. Every day should be treated as a new day at work and the optimism should show. The challenges should be met head on and dealt with the demeanor of one who enjoys doing it. Trust the Lieutenants

Delegation of power is important. You give a job to some one and if you keep nudging him, he would only be looking behind his shoulder and the work will not get done. Put somebody on a task and let him do the job. On the other hand, if you encourage him, he may come up with some idea that could change the company’s fortunes! The sense of passion to build a successful business is to be shared with all those who have anything to do with the business.  Build Relationships

A leader should be able to build relationship with people who could be from any walk of life because he is not to know who will come in handy in what. The relationship built should not be left to wither. It should be nurtured to good health. At the same time, humility should not be lost. And, family and social values should not lost sight of. Do not Rest

It is quite possible, with such dedication, for you achieve your goal. Should you rest on your laurels? Absolutely not! Raise the bar again and again. Never rest. Work harder than before and lead from front. Let the people behind you emulate you. Let them work even harder than you. You should be brave enough to tread untrodden paths, taking the risks inherent in a particular venture. You may fail sometimes. Who doesn’t fail? Should that stop you from moving ahead? No, take it in your stride. Treat it as a learning experience and move on. Risks are to be taken

The modern times require the ability to marshal the resources and come up with innovative ideas. These ideas should be fueled by the energy that constantly flows from you. Risks are to be taken. You can not grow if timidity stops you from embarking on something new. Boundaries should be crossed and status quo should be discarded. Conventional wisdom is all good but if it stands between you and the growth, you should be able to defy it in the interest of the growth of the company. Stepping Stone

Your sight should always be the on goal you had set yourself and the hurdles, which will be many, do not have to stand in the way. Adversity is something that faces all successful businessmen. A good leader converts the obstacles into stepping stones and moves up leaving the adversity gaping at him.

Bureaucratic leadership: Here the leaders strictly adhere to the organizational rules and policies. Also, they make sure that the employees/team also strictly follows the rules and procedures. Promotions take place on the basis of employees’ ability to adhere to organizational rules. This leadership style gradually develops over time. This leadership style is more suitable when safe work conditions and quality are required. But this leadership style discourages creativity and does not make employees self-contented.